


Moving On (The Everything Old Is New Again Remix)

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Angel The Series (comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-02
Updated: 2010-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:23:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Even the dead have to move on.</i> A small box, a trapped vampire, and a few lifetime's worth of memories - good and bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving On (The Everything Old Is New Again Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brutti_ma_buoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Painful Birth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29425) by [brutti_ma_buoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni). 



> A/N: Thanks to my beta, **anxiety_junkie** for her hard work and dedication. This story contains spoilers for the Angel comic series up to issue #31.

It's the stillness that gets him.

The solitude and the forced idleness he can handle. It's actually a pretty good description of a whole century of his existence. Not being able to move is worse than death and since he's been dead awhile, he figures he has a pretty good perspective on it. Death can be interesting; lying in a metal and plaster body cast is definitely not interesting.

He can hear the soft, mechanical susurrus of his blood as it's drawn out through the tubes invading his body. The same tuneless hum brings fresh blood in through other tubes. Animal blood, not human- if he could laugh at a corporation of thieves and murderers humoring his ethical standards, he would. But it's just as likely they want to keep him weak. Human blood might give him strength.

The immobility combines with the murmur and scent of blood, transfixing his senses – the whole of it is frighteningly familiar. It's the stillness of his grave the night he was reborn; the stillness of the ocean tomb Connor abandoned him to – and like then, he can still hear, still feel.

Angel fights to move - a finger, a toe, something. Anything. Nothing happens. He's weak. The metal and plaster cast keeps him contained and sometimes he thinks the blood they feed him is tainted – magic? Chemicals? He doesn't know. He rarely tries to move anymore. Not much point. But sometimes he thinks he hears her and he forgets to be still.

His hands ache, a phantom pain that comes in flashes as he remembers that long, slow climb through the frigid earth. His newly reborn body, coursing with magic, trembled under the weight of the world above him. It was instinct that pushed him up through the soil that covered his coffin; instinct and the whispers of encouragement from a hauntingly familiar voice.

_Come to me._

She's still with him. In the blood they steal from him; in the tilt of their son's eyes; the ashes that coat his mouth. He killed her. She killed him. They were nothing but death to each other and to everyone they met.

Jesus. Angel wants to scream; or at least sigh, or blink, or get the hell up and rip a few throats out. Since he can't, he surrenders back into the strange almost-pain of the body cast – the struggle makes it worse. Struggling always makes it worse.

It all floods back - the choke of his first unnecessary breath; the tingles and tremors of his reanimated body pushing against the crushing confinement of his casket – he remembers trying to force air into his dead lungs; dirt clods filling his mouth, compacting in his throat. The world was noisy, alive under the ground, and he could feel it – the clamor of life, pressing against his flesh.

And always, there was that voice.

He can't hear it now. He can't hear anything except the constant drip and flow of blood. The metal and plaster block even his preternatural hearing, and the few noises that do invade his solitude are blurry and indistinct – echoes of echoes.

That's all this is – echoes of echoes.

There's no voice. He hasn't heard her in years. He wants to. Sometimes he wonders if he could do it again. Bring her back, like Wolfram and Hart did; bring her back, make it work this time. He doesn't need to stop with just her. He could bring them all back. It might even work.

That's why he knows he'll never do it.

After Connor, after the fall, he knows better. He's taken the high road and the low road, twisted the damn world inside and back out. None of it made things better. None of it brought anyone back.

He keeps thinking about it, though. Keeps thinking about how it could be, hearing their voices again; having them with him. He can't stop remembering. And he wonders if this is how it all starts. How you get from attraction to death. How a new vampire is chosen.

It's an old and easy trap, those tales of eternal love.

He used to think that way. He used to believe Darla had chosen him because he was special; he mattered. He used to believe it was an honor. A gift. It's not and it took a hundred years wrestling with a soul to figure that out.

It's not love that drives a vampire to make another. It's a howling, consuming need of one kind or another – for service, for revenge, for the sheer pleasure of destroying someone you used to love. It's never about preserving love for eternity. Love isn't deathless.

Angel knows. More than 200 years since he fought his way free of the flimsy wood that kept him in the grave and he's seen love die a thousand thousand times since. Sometimes he's killed it himself, crushing or bleeding love from the fragile husk that surrounds it. Death is his constant companion, his ally as often as his enemy.

He can't even remember all of his victims. He only remembers the deaths of those he loved. He can still see the thin trickle of blood staining his sister's face. He can taste the sweetness of her blood and hear the high pitch of her screams. The painful light of love in her eyes was the last part of her to die.

He tries not to sleep.

Not that he's afraid of missing much. It's just that he can't relinquish this last tiny bit of control. He can't move, can't stop the death and destruction his blood is wreaking. Can't change the past. Can't ever really atone. All he can do is stay awake and so he does.

Angel drifts, letting the memories wash over him. They aren't all bad. Most of them are horrible. Terrifying. And they still have such power over him. The soul doesn't make him good. The soul gives him a choice. But evil is seductive; more than seductive – addictive.

The memories come quick - Darla, dancing in ruined silk under the guillotine, face and body spattered in noble blood; the thin, feeble bodies of the children Drusilla would lure to their temporary homes; Spike's back covered in raised welts and split skin, souvenirs of a bullwhip and a bad mood- and he lets them come, feeling the tug of desire low in his belly.

But as much as the memories pull him in, they're just memories. He's not who he was – not the boy his father planted in that long-ago grave and not the demon that escaped from it. Even the dead have to move on.


End file.
